1. Technical Field
Example embodiments of the present invention relate in general to a surgical instrument, and more specifically, to a surgical retractor for lifting an organ of a body of a patient during minimally invasive surgery (MIS) using laparoscopy instruments.
2. Related Art
In general, when performing laparotomy in order to treat a patient, an incision is large and a bleeding amount occurring at the surgical procedure is high, so that the patient recovers slowly. In addition, such a surgical procedure leaves a large scar, causing problems later in the patient's life. In order to overcome drawbacks of the laparotomy such as these, new surgical methods such as minimally invasive surgery (MIS) using laparoscopy instruments have been developed.
MIS is a surgical method of cutting only a minimum portion on a surface of a body of a patient using an elongated instrument specifically designed to minimize the incision necessary for the surgery. Because of the advantages of MIS, such as that the incision necessary for the surgical procedure is small, the bleeding amount is significantly less than that of the laparotomy, a postsurgical recovery period of the patient is short, and the outwardly visible scar is small. The number of surgical procedures using MIS is dramatically increasing.
A surgical retractor is used to increase a field of vision of a surgical area and expand a working region of various surgical instruments by lifting organs of the human body which are positioned over the surgical area during MIS using laparoscopy instruments. For example, a liver retractor is used to lift a portion of a liver in an upward direction covering a stomach so that the stomach to be operated on can be seen clearly by an endoscope when operating on the stomach using laparoscopy instruments.
However, existing surgical retractors including the liver retractor have a drawback in that installation is complicated. For example, a separate large fixing platform may need to be installed at an outer position.
Meanwhile, a Y-shaped liver retractor is disclosed in “New technique for the retraction of the liver in laparoscopic gastrectomy” (Yoshihisa Sakaguchi, 2008) in Surg Endosc 22:2532-2534. The liver retractor includes a Y-shaped support member configured to support a lower portion of a liver and a lift wire fixed to each of three end portions of the support member, and lifts a portion of the liver covering an upper portion of the stomach during a surgical procedure.
However, the liver retractor has a problem in that the lifted lower surface of the liver may incur mild to severe damage during the operation, since there is no function of protecting a lower surface of the liver positioned in a region between the Y-shaped support members.